Hello

I received an MA in Literature and Philosophy from the Università degli Studi of Milan (Italy) in 2002, a MSc in Social Anthropology from the London School of Economics (UK) in 2009, and a PhD in Socio-Cultural Anthropology from the University of Toronto in 2015. I am an anthropologist of religion and magic, a scholar of Contemporary Paganisms, and the co-chair of the Contemporary Pagan Studies Unit at the American Academy of Religion. My work is firmly grounded in ethnographic and auto-ethnographic practices, and my main focus of interest are the relationships between magic and religion, politics, and gender. My first monograph, Feminism, Violence and Representation in Modern Italy: ‘We Are Witnesses, Not Victims’ (Indiana University Press, 2019) dealt with violence against women, and my second, The Spider Dance: Tradition, Time, and Healing in Southern Italy (Equinox Publishing, forthcoming) with contemporary Pagan women and healing. I published on the topic of conspiracy theories and contemporary spirituality. As a Research Associate in the Transcendence and Transformation Initiative at the CSWR, I am starting a new ethnographic project titled Magic and Populism in Southern Europe. At HDS, I teach courses on the Anthropology of Magic, Religion and Healing, and on Religion, Materiality, and the Senses.